ETHWarsaw 2023: limone, urbe.eth | ETHRome - Social Media Protocols

hi le moon we invite you to give your amazing talk about social media protocols everybody give it up for him thank you so yeah I wanted to stay down here but I don't have the you know the controller so I guess I just say here uh hi leemon um I'm from Rome Italy I'm running a community in Rome called h. heat and we're also organizing uh Heat the for sakon happening in our country and I'm passionated about decentralized social networks uh that's why today I wanted to give you an overview of the decentralization Spectrum in the space so going from the centralized Giants that we know and we use in our daily life like hex LinkedIn meta Instagram whatever to the web three innovators in the in the social space a little bit more about myself so my name is Simone but friends called mimon again for the just for the you know the the the war game uh I'm a software engineer uh I love building things in Frontier Tech I've been in web3 for two years now I'm a community Builder I love traveling a lot I've been to eight to nine conferences at aons this year uh sometimes I'm a DJ and I love uh dead jokes so let's get started um what are the key components of social networks uh we have for sure name the name space so my username like my handle on Twitter or uh my U email let's say or my username on Instagram whatever uh the network uh it means the the social graph my connections my follows my followers the content that I posted so everything that connects me with uh with people on on the on the social media uh the database which is where all the data is uh stored of course uh the protocol means uh like the set of rules that allows me to uh interact with other people in the network those could be like messages likes or follows this kind of stuff uh platforms are uh you know the clients either web or mobile that allows me to um interact with other people that are part of the uh social network and then the rules set that are um often defined by the companies behind uh The Social Network that could be the the algorithm or you know some forbidden actions uh or some rules that they want they may want to uh set let's start with the with our journey uh in the decentralization Spectrum starting from the centralization which we know is is not ideal uh especially in in this case because everything that I mentioned in the previous slide in centralized social networks is controlled by uh the company or the owner of the company so in this case I put our friend Elon Musk who controls the namespace the network the database the protocol the platform and the the rule set of X in this case and this comes with some uh issues of course because they are always uh allowed to revoke my username or maybe suspend my account uh buan or can delete uh one of my posts they can decide for example for for a developer they can decide to change the API uh rule set they can revoke my API key and whatever they're also in control of the data so everything is stored on on their data and and it's up to them to treat that correctly uh this is a recent example of when uh Twitter branded tox there was a a guy who owned a hex uh handle in this case and he was trying to to sell it of course uh but at some point uh the Twitter company uh decided to get uh the control of the handle and uh uh of course the the guy was not able to sell it anymore and um he only received some gifts back to from from Elon Musk um another problem of centralized social networks is that they are uh wallet Gardens meaning that uh data is not portable between different social networks so uh you don't really own your social graph it's the company uh that HS it and you can't really Escape so of course you you can somehow migrate your data but it's it's not that easy and um the problem is that uh if I don't like Twitter anymore and I want to go I don't know on Instagram or some other platforms I have to start from scratch to build my reputation and my following and my content on on the other uh platform that I'm now using that's why I think that we should strive to uh use and build more uh open protocols instead of locking ourself into uh platforms closed platforms uh but uh even though um you know open Protocols are not really immune to centralization uh because think about SMTP and emails or browsing they are heavily centralized on on Google uh because a lot of us use Gmail or Chrome uh instead of I don't know Outlook or Internet Explorer for example but at least I'm able to uh switch between competing clients uh following whatever I prefer to do and at the same time for example if I have a Gmail account I can still send you an email on your Yahoo account because we are communicating through a open uh protocol the next step in in the decentralization spectrum is called the fediverse which is uh a model uh it's a collection of tools actually and and platform using the uh activity uh Pub protocol which is a protocol that defines uh apis and rules in which servers and clients have to communicate uh to each other uh the most famous example of platforms and social network built on top of the activity P protocol is mastodon how many of you know about madon okay some of you and for those of you that don't know Mastodon basically um on Mastodon instead of having a single server like on Twitter or like a single feed uh uh people can OST their server so I can OST my server and an instance on Mastodon and I can uh allow users registering to my instance and reading whatever it's coming it's going up there uh and this comes with some improvement uh but also some drawbacks with respect to the centralized platforms uh cool things about the five diverse is that again diverse server ecosystem because there are multiple instances and I can choose the one that I prefer the most according to my uh what I like and what I don't like user migrations uh so it's easier to migrate your data and your followers uh among uh the different instances and community control because instead of having uh you know a company pursuing their interest um um in controlling The Social Network in this case servers are owned by Community people so hobbies are around the world things that I don't like about the fediverse is that uh there are some centralization Tendencies because users tend to uh register um to in the most popular instances so there are like four or five instances like masteron docial masteron doart uh and user gravitate towards those servers uh communication silos because instances cannot really communicate with each other and admins can also prevent other instances um in their in their system privacy concerns because uh I already told about this that uh it's it's people and and not companies owning your data and owning the the servers and somehow this is uh in my opinion like worst because there's no n encryption and your data is managed not by a public and maybe even regulated company with a lot of attention in it but by some Hobbies around the world and so you need to trust these people running a server at the at their place uh that they are not selling your data or they are not doing something wrong with it and then self-hosting challenges because it's not so easy to uh you know host an instance on on masteron and on the fivers in general before going to the you know onchain uh solutions for social networks uh there are also some other protocols that I wanted to mention that are blue sky which is uh inspired by the the fediverse model and it was started inside Twitter uh and now it's a standalone company uh trying to uh improve account portability between these instances uh and then there's also nost which is uh really Niche social network where instead of username you have just public Keys uh and uh so they have this unique non-name space approach um and it's uh like really really underground let's say let's let's go onchain without the dash um foraster and lens how many of you know about farcaster lens same all almost wow so uh these are like in my opinion the uh main social media protocols that are building uh on chain or somehow on chain uh and I wanted to you know highlight them especially foraster which I I I like more um here is a brief overview of and also a comparison between the two so for example on farcaster they just went on optimis M it and they are um you know in order to register you have to pay a an annual fee uh that's uh is used to pay for the data storage and you have also to renew your handle and while on on lens uh you have only a onetime uh handle creation on foraster you have IDs and um you know readable usernames while on uh lens uh you use public keys to identify uh in the network um on forecaster the content is stored on a peer-to-peer of chain Network and they have this concept of sufficient decentralization while on lens everything is on chain or almost everything uh they are based on polygon for transactions and module extensions and they recently um released this heal tree called Moka to improve scalability while farcaster again uh relies on optimism but only for the user identity so the content is not on chain about lens uh again they have this L2 uh approach with polygon and then an optimistic L3 technology called Moka so they have both efficiency on one side and scalability thanks to Moka uh profiles are nfts uh minted by uh users and and wallets of course and and they give user control over their profile data and whatever they do in the network composability monetization because lens allows you to add custom modules to your nft profile to I don't know uh monetize your content follow other people or maybe you can create custom logic about who can consume your content based on if they follow you if they don't follow you and whatever and decentralization the data Integrity because again everything is on chain uh efficiency thanks to uh polygon and uh open source node operation because of that as well let's go into foraster um foraster again uh is on optimism uh and it it also uses an of chain peer-to-peer Network um and this peer-to-peer network is synchronized synchronize the states so what's happening in the in the network through uh Delta graph updates uh they use secure and human rable identifiers like lmon dasit uh and they recently also integrated with enss so your username on foraster can be a your enss uh realtime settlement and cost effective data access like for developers is really good because um you know to even to post content you don't have to run transactions you just have to sign them uh and it's happening behind the scenes and it's also costly to to read the data uh and the network again it's peer-to-peer it's decentralized and uh uh it's easy to to propagate data between the hubs in the network how does it work so you register your ID on forcaster through your wallet so your public and private key uh pair uh messages in the network so let's say I'm posting something or I'm sending a uh a message to my friend I'm signing everything with my wallet so that it's uh only me uh it's some like you know to to authenticate the messages that are uh flowing in in the network uh there is the concept of hubs that are somehow uh like blockchain nodes but are forecaster nodes in this case uh and and they use again deltagraph to achieve consensus um client ABS can connect to these subs and it's permissionless they connect connection so that they can they can easy uh easily um read the data and distribute in the best way they they want to do it to create custom customizable user experience so there are some clients that for example are related to photo sharing some others for uh he sharing uh I'm building one to uh allow you navigate through the people in the network and finding I don't know people relevant for you to follow uh and uh yeah the the the best thing is that the foraster is in theana are stored on optimism and so nobody uh can revoke them for you uh because they are on on the smart contract and it's only your address that can move it uh IDs and names I think I already talked a little bit about them um they are just you know canonical user identifiers uh started from zero now we are around I guess 20K users uh the register is an optimism uh names are humor readable uh and they recently integrated ens um and here the most interesting thing to me is the concept of sufficient decentralization which um is described in in an article by one of the co-founders of our caster and a social network achieves sufficient decentralization if two users can find each other and communicate even if the rest of the network wants to prevent it this means that you know to to achieve this property uh users should we should always be able to uh claim unique usernames and that's uh of course managed in the smart contract that are an optimism they should always be able to post messages under that username and they should always be able to read messages from any valid username and so with this user ID registry that it's on chain the and with the offchain network that is always you know open for people to send messages they are achieving this sufficient decentralization and again sufficient decentralization for me it's interesting because on chain it's only what's what's needed uh so forecaster is not X on the blockchain because uh the only part that leaves on the blockchain is the user identity again uh while messages likes follows and everything else happening is of chain um and this because the blockchain is a pool storage mechanism for data especially in a social network context because data is immutable so you can never delete a post uh and I don't know also how it works with the gdpr and the right to be forgot uh and then it's also you know bandwidth limited because on if you're posting content and for each post or action that you take you you have to uh run a transaction uh it's not really uh gas efficient and this is the forecaster stock so they are the accounts are all on optimism usernames are on ens uh hble is an open source Library uh that allows you to spin up a farcaster up in 5 minutes uh and you can easily you know integrate with a postgress SQL database let's say and uh already run queries uh on the data that is in the network and on the upper level you have all the applications there are already more than more than 30 maybe there's yup gem uh and warcast which are the most used ones I'd say but there are also there is also a very active Community Building more and more applications uh again why why blockchain is important in in this case because um using a mySQL database uh it's worse because of course like blockchain are distributed and ownerless so no single haor can uh modify hone or control uh the data stored in it and in this case we're talking about the name space for example so nobody can revoke my name and my ability to post in the network and blockchains are also permissionless and public uh so anybody can access their state and there's no need to issue any API key to to do that why decentralized socials are are important just to W up a little bit uh account ownership because I'm the single owner of my account nobody can um you know revoke that from me data portability because across the whole ecosystem I can migrate uh I can without migrating even I can just move around different clients and all my data is with with me and uh and and my ethereum address of course permission as Innovation uh because you can build services on top of open protocols without asking nobody the permission and and this is boosting Innovation a lot I think and censorship resistance moderation uh because uh on data on the protocol cannot be censored uh but um you can be moderated on on the client side so applications may decide to mute um your messages and your content if you're acting uh bad for for their client and platform but still um there could be like H clients that allow you to write whatever thank you so much um hope everything was clear these are my social uh handles uh around X forcaster and L so feel free to reach out if you have any questions and yeah thank you [Applause] again any question hi thanks for presentation um so I have a question about the centralization of the forecaster Network so is it like permissionless so how is this working like the nodes are this this hubs right they are Shing the data but is it like for cter running all the nodes or is it permissionless because like if it's like a system that you can easily like you know square around so maybe you have this ens names you have your account but if they can just just share different data that you didn't post and made you feel like see like you did yeah um of course like um both forcaster and lens I think they they are far from like having some optimal solution in the case of forcaster uh they literally like this week move from uh girly test net to Optimist main net uh the number of UPS uh is growing I think that they want to reach at least 100 OBS from the community so not not run by the the company behind the the started you know the the protocol so right now for sure it's not the most decentralized Network that you can think of but of course it's it's in their plan to uh incentivize people uh running abs and and right now the the biggest incentive that you have so you know on ethereum and other blockchains maybe you are incentivized because they you get some rewards if you validate transactions in the case of our caser right now the people incentivized to run uh hubs are the ones that are running business uh on top of the protocol so people and companies that are creating mobile applications or clients they're incentivized to decentralize more the network and so the more the user base grow and the developers ecosystem as well grows uh the more decentralized will be because there will be always you know this uh chicken egg thing um not easy okay thanks and one more question what do you think about like having so many social apps and social like networks it's like you cannot be like online on every one of them yeah um you mean about this Tre in particular or like different application in the same ecosystem no no so now you have you have this threee networks we are actively using this three right now so what if we have another one another one another one like what's the end goal here I think it's up to you how many to use actually the one that I'm using last year is is lens while I'm very active on both farcaster and x uh but I'm slowly tending to work uh far Caster uh because I like it more and um I don't I don't know if in the future we will be using like many different protocols maybe there will be one that can be can fit everyone uh there there could be like many but about the different application that you can have in the same protocol I think it's cool to have you know ways like you know right now for example I'm a type of person and I have a type of communication on Twitter while on WhatsApp I have only certain type of conversation going on on telegram different as well and so I see like these open protocols allowing me to easily you know have these different uh kind of identities uh without having I don't know 10 applications uh and different accounts on them uh but yeah it's a it's a good question I don't know where we will go and I don't know maybe like foraster and L are here right now somebody else will come hopefully with something even better and so the best thing to me is that they are bringing Innovation and inspiring people to to use them and build cool things on top of them okay thanks I just you so just want to quickly ask like how scalable are these Solutions I mean like we talk about X you know handling hundreds of millions of users right like that's just not possible at the moment with the infrastructure we have now um you know with on on polygon or on optimism and then another another thing about forecast I'm curious to know like how the um incentive models work cuz it sounds like it's just voluntary people just voluntarily host the data and because that data is not recorded on chain I understand like this there a concern of privacy right but if that data is not on chain what I think one of the key benefits of having decentralized soci show is that you could prove that you have sent a message in the past and you could have that um Providence of that message so I just want to hear your opinion on those two questions uh can you the first one sorry yeah yeah scalability scalability oh yeah scalability yeah yeah um I think that like right now uh forcaster is much more scalable because uh it's sufficient sufficiently decentralized so the only like gas fees that the company or whoever has to pay is for registering the user uh while on lens um uh okay now they introduce Moka and they allow you uh instead of posting to polygon you can just validate the transaction uh without posting it so it might be like more scalable in the future but I see forcaster right now uh winning on that side of thing um with respect to the incentive model on forecaster and hosting the data again uh you are not rewarded in any way right now to run a hub uh and the best incentive even you know talking with the the founder they they told me that in their thinking right now the best incentive is for people that are building on the protocol and so they are incentivized to uh let it live uh and and work properly so they're running like people that built gem or uh even caster which is another one they are incentivized to have an onhub first of all because it's easier uh for them to access the data but also because it's helping the network to be uh more secure uh about the Privacy uh of course all the messages that you're posting from you know these clients for example warcast they're all public and transparent I can read it in 5 minutes again if I want there are some clients that are also um trying to allow you publishing anonymous messages so it's it's up to the to the client that you use and and the way in which you also want to read the data uh so there is one project called seal caser I believe they allow you to publish anonymous messages uh and then it's up to the other clients understand how to I don't know read them decode them decrypt them whatever so right now you know if you you can post uh everything you want and the other clients can read it easily if you add some encryption or encoding stuff you know that the other clients um need to support it otherwise messages coming up coming off from your client will not be readable by other people cool thank you I have one question but I don't want to take up that was um FR Tech I know it's not decentralized show show but it's kind of cool like it is um you know innovation in the crypto social space so just very quickly what do you think about it have you used it have you bought shares I I I used it like for a couple days didn't study it very well so I can't answer like any specific question um I bought a couple share I I also had some friends buying my shares and I think it's a cool experiment uh not sure where it could go uh but it's part of uh what I call like ephemeral apps I I read an article about this ephemeral apps that uh you know we were used to this application like I don't know Facebook that was with us with I don't know how many years while now there are a lot of experiments popping up and maybe after six months the IP is gone but it's you know it's just fun and um interesting to see hello thank you for amazing presentation I I'm curious what do you think is the role of let's say this platform that I mentioned before so things like YouTube for example or uh other platforms that are kind of living on the in the surrounding of the core social platforms or social networks so I don't know twitch that kind of stuff like how how can we see uh these products complete without all of those atoms being decentralized in a sense or cont cont being published by creators into you know void of YouTube let's say and how does that relate to this in your opinion yeah um I think it's not we are not so far from having you know live streaming I don't know clients on top of foraster I don't I don't know about lens but uh as long as the protocol is flexible enough uh you can build whatever you want uh for example I in Paris I was building a voice chat app based on uh um ethereum and uh farcaster as well using the charts from farcaster um so it's it's more about maybe the infrastructure that they use so you can also I don't know create a client that is integrated with both your YouTube account and your forcaster account uh but then I don't see the point because if you're are live streaming to YouTube whatever it's on on their infrastructure uh while maybe you could think about integrating it with the decentralized um options like live peer or stream it for example um so it's it's it's all about the the flexibility and the things that you can do with the protocol and and so it's part also of the development of these things there are already like seven farcaster Improvement proposals uh I think that most of them already uh went up uh but it's just started um in the past uh with my previous company where I was working on we were trying to build a thecentral uh professional social networks so more like LinkedIn Vibes and we decided to not integrate like or like build that on top of our Custer because of the data that we need to handle and so there was not much flexibility and we decided to try creating our own but of course it's it's difficult so it's it's all about flexibility and and how you can expand the protocols and and the things that they they built I have one more question hopefully very short one high hope you're going to see it as on topic when metaverse I I don't know but um like so far I think I've seen metaverse from x y z and blah blah blah and and they are not really interconnected in like what I imagine for when I think about metaverse even if I'm I'm not so interested in this concept but if I think about it I think of something more like you know this open protocol so let's say that you have an open uh infrastructure where everybody can build you have an account and then there are like different Platforms in which you can interact with people uh maybe in VR maybe just in chat uh but the most important thing like for example even now on forecaster I can create a client where you can connect with your account and you have your username and instead of interacting between uh you know messages or how your stuff we can interact with a VR reality I don't know so I see something more in that direction and do you think these new platforms decentralized they could be more open more interoperable between each other because for me it seems that we're just getting more silos essentially of course like now right now they are silos and they are also different approaches to building the same thing so lens started with a protocol Force approach so they built the protocol force and then involved the uh developer ecosystem while forecaster started with with product first so they had a client involved you know they they got some traction on the user base and and then they started opening up the protocol to allow developers build on it on them so it's kind of I don't think they are competing uh they are competing more with the other centralized platform because there are lot of people that are still on X LinkedIn or uh Instagram whatever and I don't know if they will coexist in the future but for sure like the way also in which they started it and like the way in which the Pro work is so different that not easy to to join the protocol maybe uh somebody can build a I don't know a single client where you can can connect with both but still it's an headache I think thank you so so much lemon for this very interesting talk thank so